As Kevin Spencer sees it, there are two different types of people who come to a magic show.

There are the ones who simply want to be amazed, and there are the ones who want to break down the illusion and come up with rational explanations for how the guy on stage is able to manipulate the audience's perceptions.

Spencer knows both of those types will be in the audience for his two shows at The American Theatre in Hampton on Saturday – and he's glad about that.

"It takes both of them, the believers and the doubters, to really make the crowd," Spencer said. "I need to look out in the audience and see someone nudging the person next to them saying, 'How did he do that?' And you need those two different groups to start the conversation. If everyone came in believing, it wouldn't be nearly as much fun."

Inevitably, audience members will approach him after a show and attempt to guess at how certain tricks are done. Some magicians and illusionists hate that. Spencer says he welcomes it. About 5 percent of the time, he said, their explanations are pretty close to the mark. Every great once in a while, someone nails it. When that happens, he just smiles and suggests that it's an interesting theory.

"Every now and then I perform on a college campus," he said. "I especially love playing at Carnegie Mellon, or the University of Missouri at Rolla – the big engineering campuses. For two weeks after those shows I'll be getting emails with intricate drawings of how they think the tricks work."

Spencer, 50, performs with his wife, Cindy. Their show has won many industry honors, including The Merlin Award for International Magicians of the Year, which is the top award given each year by the International Magicians Society.

He studied to become a clinical psychologist, but never actually worked in that profession. Instead, he got sidetracked by his great love of magic.

"I joke about it - I went to school to help people's minds, but now all I do is mess with them," Spencer said.

"But really, the two fields go hand-in-hand. A good magician has the uncanny skill to jump past people's attention and perceptions and awareness. The man on stage says, 'Follow me through the course of this illusion, as I walk through walls or cut somebody in half,' and it leaves the audience's brains to fill in the blanks."

All good and fine, but if the stage show isn't entertaining, the psychological explanation means nothing.

Like many contemporary magicians, the Spencers present their illusions with a casual, "everyman" stage persona. After a recent show in California, a reviewer at the Chico Enterprise-Record wrote of how Kevin Spencer "befriended the audience almost immediately, turning them from spectators to participants."

The show is called "Theatre of Illusions," and sure enough, its presentation and lighting effects combine elements of a Broadway play with elements of a rock concert. The Chicago Tribune praised the Spencers for "bringing the age-old art of magic into the 21st century."

The standard illusions are represented. People and props will disappear and reappear. Someone will have his or her top half separated from his or her bottom half. But the Spencers keep trying to find new twists. Kevin Spencer walks through a spinning metal fan blade without getting chopped to bits – but he does it with the fan blades facing the audience, so they lose the sense that he's concealing something with a side view.

The Spencers – along with their lead creator Jim Steinmeyer – are always looking for new ideas for tricks, and new ways to present old ones. That's another reason Spencer said he enjoys those conversations with curious fans after the show.

"There's so much to learn," he said. "A 13-year-old video gamer is definitely more keyed into technology than a 50-year-old magician. I listen closely to everything someone suggests or asks, because they could be offering something unique. That helps to keep us progressive, and we don't do that, then the art dies."